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Will Pinterest Be The Platform That Proves ROI?

Pinterest’s unique capabilities as a social shopping platform make it the gift that keeps on giving for brands and influencers who leverage the tool to increase ROI. In our experience,
Pinterest leads all other social networks for driving traffic to our influencer community’s blogs: 67% of social referral traffic is directed from the platform.

We have studied the reach
per influencer within our community, which has increased 1.3x from a year ago and 1.7x from two years ago. We have also seen the inclusion of “Promoted Pins” increase engagement in
influencer campaigns by 1.8x, so it is clear that Pinterest is proving to be a top performing tool for both brands and influencers.

I recently spoke with Amy Vener, retail vertical
strategy lead at Pinterest, to gain further insights into the platform. She shared, “200 million people around the world come to Pinterest monthly to plan meals, figure out what to wear, or how
to style their homes. Shopping is a big part of this as people use Pinterest throughout the entire path to purchase, from inspiration to action. The visual nature of the platform helps people make
discoveries, and oftentimes, those ideas inspire them to buy something. That’s what’s unique about Pinterest, it’s a completely organic part of the experience. Pinners can click
through to the retailer's website, buy right on Pinterest, or go to the store—whatever's easiest.”

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So, in what ways has Pinterest changed the online experience and
expand the reach for brands?

People associate Pinterest with taking action; 98% of Pinners report trying new things found on Pinterest,
compared to an average of 71% across all social media platforms, per Nielsen.

Pinners shop and spend more than the general
public. This held true across categories including retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG). For example: Pinners are 39% more likely to be active shoppers—and when shopping, they
spend 29% more than non-Pinners, according to Oracle.

Pinners over index non-Pinners by 15-20% in likelihood to spend more than originally
planned. In addition to over indexing on likelihood to purchase more products than intended, they are also more likely to shop across new categories.

Pinners have a huge appetite for video content. Video is an important tool in a retailer’s arsenal. An Animoto study showed four out of five people think demo
videos are important and 4x as many customers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it. “In the past year, we’ve seen an increase in videos saved on Pinterest
featuring everything from home projects to hair and beauty tutorials. Pinners have a huge appetite for video: 75% say they’re likely to watch videos about topics that interest them, compared to
55% of people on other platforms,” stated Vener, citing a 2016 Pinterest study.

Visual recognition with Pinterest Lens will aid shopper’s product
discovery. When people shop in the physical world, visual cues steer them to products. Pinterest uses visual content to replicate this browsing process digitally. Since everything on
Pinterest is visual, it’s easy for people to recognize appealing ideas as they see them.

“With Pinterest Lens, which uses your mobile camera to search for ideas using
objects seen in the real world, we're offering even more ways for people to find products—including things they didn’t know about before,” says Vener. “While search engines
rely on text, we're focused on the untapped potential of searching and discovering with your camera.

“Consumers want to be able to discover ideas that are personal to
individual tastes and once they discover these ideas they want to be able to shop — anytime, anywhere. Today, the digital shopping experience isn't great, discovery is hard and taking an action
once you do discover something is even harder. Pinterest is enabling more personalized shopping experiences through human curation and machine learning. We're building a visual discovery engine that
takes on where search left off — helping people discover their style and ideas they love that they didn’t know existed.”

Pinterest is poised to be the
platform to deliver the highest ROI among social platforms for retailers. It will be interesting to see how Pinterest balances the business need for monetization while protecting the inspirational,
visual nature of the platform that was a huge attraction for its users.